Cocaine is the least ethical product in the world

Helen Mirren has revealed that she went off cocaine for a rather unusual reason. Not because it was damaging her health or causing her nostrils to merge, nor because she had qualms about breaking the law, nor yet because she was setting a bad example. No, she stopped snorting when she read that Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war-criminal, had been supporting himself in Bolivia partly from the profits of her habit.

The more I think about this, the more I admire her. I am, as long-standing readers will know, a drippy liberal when it comes to drugs. But the moral case against encouraging cocaine traffic strikes me as hard to answer.

When I was in Colombia earlier this year, the Vice-President showed me some of the ecological consequences of cultivation: the felling of rainforests and the drying up of soil (coca is a thirsty crop). He struggled to understand how eco-conscious Europeans could blithely fund such devastation.

He has a point. The people who hoover up the most coke tend, in my experience, to be finicky consumers in any other context. They drink fair trade coffee. They recycle conscientiously. They won't wear fur. They regard oil corporations as devilish. But, when it comes to their narcotic of choice, they are happy to sustain an industry that wrecks natural habitats, condemns small farmers to the tyranny of racketeers, props up corrupt regimes and inhibits the spread of democracy.

If there is a less ethical product than smuggled cocaine, I have yet to hear of it.